Hassan, the "gay man from Somalia"... who doesn't exist

Why is a hair model being used to promote the organisation "Micro Rainbow"?

Yesterday an organisation titled Micro Rainbow celebrated the fact that “Hassan, a gay man from Somalia” had been granted refugee status in the UK.

It wrote that Hassan was “rebuilding his life, supported by our Moving On team”.

The only issue is that Hassan doesn’t exist. An account titled “Xamse Y.” was first to point out that the image of him is actually of “a Black man advertising hair”, and even edited by AI (take the fact “Hassan” is now wearing a black t-shirt, whereas his chest is bare in the original image).

I did a reverse search on Google and saw the same man on different sites, all about hair…

… including one from an article written in 2023.

I wonder if this man knows his image is being used by Micro Rainbow - to show a man who has just narrowly escaped from Sharia Law.

Micro Rainbow, a private limited company (whose “international work is undertaken by the Micro Rainbow International Foundation”), says it provides “safe housing, employability, and and social inclusion support for LGBTQI refugees and people seeking asylum.”

According to 360 Giving Data, it has £653,354 in funding from Comic Relief and The National Lottery Community Fund:

A few years ago it was endorsed by The Mayor of London and London Assembly in a page titled “imagining a perfect community”:

The webpage talked about how Micro Rainbow had run a “theatre workshop with 18 LGBTQI asylum seekers and refugees, focused on the theme of community.”

(Fortunately there were some real people at the event.)

Micro Rainbow regularly posts images of people it’s helped on its social media output:

You just have to wonder if they are all actually refugees…